Gibraltar police launch credit card anti-fraud campaign

Numerous retailers have been affected by Card Not Present Fraud (CNPF) in the past two years, resulting in losses totalling over £100,000

Debbie Bartlett

Friday, 23 December 2022, 11:38

A new campaign to tackle bank card fraud has recently been launched by the RGP's Economic Crime Unit, to raise awareness of Card Not Present Fraud (CNPF), which has seen a number of retailers targeted in the past two years and losses totalling over £100,000.

As part of the campaign detectives are visiting shops in the city centre to explain how the scam works and a special poster has been designed with clues of what to look out for. Detective Constable Joe Given of the ECU said: "Typically, a fraudster will enter a store and attempt to make payment using a fraudulent bank card. In order to conduct the transaction, they will often take control of the Point of Sale (POS) machine and manually enter the details of the fraudulent bank card by selecting the 'card not present' option. Once payment is authorised, the fraudsters will leave the store with the goods. On many occasions, the retailer will only discover that the transaction was fraudulent when they receive a chargeback letter from the card issuer, informing them that the genuine cardholder did not authorise or participate in the transaction. The disputed amount will be debited from the retailer's billing account."

The RGP advises businesses that there are six suspicious signs to look out for. These are:

The use of multiple cards and declined attempts; an attempt to buy a large number of items at once, not caring about size, colour or price; a client taking control of the POS machine, as they could be trying to bypass the security features; rushing or distracting the cashier; constantly using their mobile phone or asking the cashier to speak to their "bank"; or using non-UK issued bank cards. It is possible to check where cards were issued on several free websites.

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